A MARYLAND PILGRIMAGE
estuaries are just as
capable of feeding vast
hordes of crabs to-day
as in the past; that the
waters around the Vir
ginia capes are just as
salty as they were
when Captain Joh n
Smith first landed at
Old Point Comfort;
and that the crabs have
fallen victims to no
blight, like the chest
nut trees.
REJUVENATING THE
CRAB INDUSTRY
"We can tell you
how to rejuvenate your
industry," it says.
"Let Virginia crabmen
forego the taking of
'sponge' crabs at any
season a n d shorten
winter dredging from
six to three months.
Let both States raise
the legal length of the
marketable hard-shell
crab from five to six
inches (from tip to tip
of spike), and Mary
land that of soft-shell
crabs from three to
three-and-a
-
ha1f
inches. And then stop
the practice of putting
'green' crabs in floats,
with the attendant 60
per cent mortality,
and turn loose the
'buckrams,' and your
industry will 'come
Photograph by Jacob Gayer
IN A TERRAPIN COMPOUND
The diamond-back "farmer" has received an order for a barrel of
terrapins of a certain size, and he is carefully measuring the restaurant
candidates. Not all of the diamond-backs in this compound have been
raised on the farm; many are purchased a few at a time by the farmer
from boys of the neighborhood who find individual turtles and dispose
of them in this community "clearing house" from which they are
marketed (see, also, page 163).
back' to your heart's content."
Most of this advice has been enacted
into law. At Crisfield a crabman was
selling his boatload of crabs to a dealer
recently. The crabman threw into the
dealer's boat an undersized one or two.
"Don't throw any of them in," demanded
the dealer.
"You can put a few dead
ones in, but you had better not put in any
that are undersized."
When there was
doubt, a ruler was brought into play and
the crab measured. So at least a part of
the law is being enforced.
Once Maryland was the center of the
gastronomic universe, for in a bygone
generation the diamond-back terrapin rep
resented the supreme viand where men
loved to live well. The Chesapeake Bay
teemed with these candidates for the ban
quet table's preferment, and any fine day
they could be seen sunning themselves on
the sand bars and flats. But the organ
ized preying of commerce did what all the
natural enemies of a species seldom do,
and the diamond-back has almost reached
the vanishing point in Chesapeake waters.
153